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The James Beard Public Market and Melvin Mark Development Co. are expected to ink a deal with Multnomah County to acquire three acres at the Morrison Bridgehead for a year-round farmers market on Thursday.
James Beard Public Market finds a home
Portland Business Journal by Wendy Culverwell , Business Journal staff writer
Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 9:58am PDT - Last Modified: Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 2:54pm PDT
http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/...&ed=2012-06-12
Quote:
Multnomah County commissioners will cap a decades-long effort to create a year-round farmers market in Portland this week by inking a deal to sell land to the James Beard Public Market and its partner, Melvin Mark Development Co.
County commissioners will vote Thursday — Flag Day — on a $10.4 million deal to sell a three-acre parking lot at the western end of the Morrison Bridge to the market team.
The county expects to net $10 million from the sale. Proceeds are earmarked to replace or remodel the aging county courthouse. The county will forgo approximately $400,000 a year in revenue generated by the parking lot.
The James Beard team spent more than a decade looking for the right site for the “kitchen” equivalent to the city’s “living room,” aka Pioneer Courthouse Square. In 2008, the market was an also-ran in the competition to secure the historic U.S. Post Office, 511 N.W. Broadway, when the government opted instead to transfer it to the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
The Morrison Bridge site offered the right mix of downtown location and access to public transportation.
It signed on with Melvin Mark to pursue the Morrison property when Multnomah County decided to sell it several years ago. The county selected the James Beard/Melvin Mark proposal over a rival proposal by Gerding Edlen Development and Downtown Development Group to install a mixed-use eco district there.
The sale agreement gives the market 37 months to raise the approximately $25 million it needs to proceed.
County commissioners meet at 9:30 a.m. June 14 at 501 S.E. Hawthorne St.
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